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Tsongkhapa'slife falls roughly into an earlier and later period. The later period is defined by a series of publications, beginning in about 1400, which systematically present his mature philosophy. Tsongkhapa, influenced by the divisions used by the editors of the Kanjur, treats non-tantric and tantric sources separately. His philosophicalviews on tantra, and, to a certain extent his work on ethics fall naturally into separate categories. The later period of his life includes a period of institution building, possibly with an eye to the founding of a new school or sect.
1.2 Detailed account

Together, in this series of works written over a seventeen year period, he succeeded in setting the agenda for the following centuries, to a great extent, with later writers taking positions pro and con his arguments. As is so often the case, his stature pushed much of earlier Tibetanintellectual history into the shadows, until its rediscovery by the Eclectic Movement (Tib. Ris med) in Derge (sDe dge) in the late 18th century.

Tsongkhapa limits the sources for his explanation to non-tantric works, almost all by persons he will later describe as IndianYogācāra writers, demonstrating thereby the influence the categories used in the recently redacted Kanjur and Tenjur (Tib. bsTan 'gyur, the name for the commentaries in Tibetan translation included in the canon) had on his thinking.

The Golden Garlanddisputes that Vasubandhu is the author of the two Defenses, and says, regardless of their author, they are simply restatements of Nāgārjuna'sMiddle Way. Finally, Dolpopa propounds a doctrine that holds that the basis, path, and result are eternally the same, and all else is thoroughly imaginary, but the Golden Garland is certain that such a view is wrong, and directly cites a passage from Dolpopa's work, though without naming its author, saying, “since no other great path-breaker, [i.e., founder of an original philosophy] besides him has ever asserted [what Dolpopa says], learned persons are right to cast out [what he says] like a gob of spit” (Sparham 2008, p. 425).
3. Mature Period

Tsongkhapa set out the ramifications of his view in “eight points that are difficult to understand” (Tib. dka' gnas brgyad) first enumerated in notes (rjes byang) to one of his lectures by his contemporary and disciple, Darmarin chen (also called rGyal tshab rje “the regent”). Tillemans (1998) has nicely rendered the opening of the text as follows,

“Concerning the [[[Wikipedia:Ontology|ontological]]] bases, there are the following [three points]:

Concerning the result, there is: (8) the way in which the buddhas know [[[Wikipedia:Convention (norm)|conventional]]] things in their full extent. Thus, there are four accepted theses and four unaccepted theses.”

They have been discussed by a number of writers (Ruegg 2002, Cabezon 1992, 397).

Tsongkhapa holds that sentences and their content, on the one hand, and minds and what appears to them on the other, function in the same way. Saying (1) of a set of “true” and “false” statements that they are all equally untrue, and (2) saying of unmediated sense-based perception or mistaken ideas that they are equally untrue is to say the same thing. The truth in both is decided by convention, not by something inhering in the true statement (or its content), or the valid perception (or its object). For Tsongkhapa, therefore, since all appearance is false, the Buddhaknows, but without any appearance of truth (the eighth difficult point).
4. Hermeneutics

The first of the three specifically Buddhistcodes, the basic code, primarily governs the behavior of monks and nuns. Since for Tsongkhapa each higher code incorporates all the rules in the lower code, he conceives of the seven (or even twelve) sub-codes making up the basic code as, in descending order, containing fewer and fewer of the rules that constitute the full code. Each of the sub-codes is designed for particular people in particular human situations. Tsongkhapa does not expect a butcher to be governed by the rule of not killing, for example, and he does not expect a lawyer to be governed by the rule of not lying. He avoids gross devaluation of the basic code by privileging spiritual elites. In this, he takes a pragmatic approach to ethics in line with his non-absolutist stance. For Tsongkhapa, it is axiomatic that human life is not ipso facto privileged above any other form of life, but his detailed explanation gives greater “weight” to the karmic retribution that comes from killinghumans, and amongst humans, noble persons, for example, than less fortunateforms of life.

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